‘I’ll be first in line to buy your bonds’: how Zhu Rongji put steel in Hong Kong’s spine

In late 2002, former Chinese premier Zhu Rongji visited Hong Kong and sought to put steel in the spine of the city’s establishment that was floundering under an economic slump and a ballooning deficit. “Even if you spend all your fiscal reserves three years from now, what is there to fear?” he asked his dinner guests at Government House in a famously unscripted speech. “If you issue 50-year long-term Hong Kong bonds on the mainland, I will be the first in line to buy them. I believe the…